Op-ed: If I want your app, I'm not going to get it on my way to browsing your site.

The Internet has lately upped its count of roadblocks and dead ends: obligatory e-mail subscription forms, Facebook page "like" prompts, and pages that masquerade as informational only to be a page full of ads. The individual, instantaneous outrage that an encounter with, say, one mandatory e-mail address request is infinitesimally small. But as this strategy of information culling or attention-grabbing rises, the Internetgoers begin to cry out.

One pop-up-shaming site, tabcloseddidntread.com, specifically focuses on sites that tease you with their content before blocking it with some form that requires your attention (creator Andy Beaumont further explained the thinking behind the site in a Medium post). Sometimes they require an e-mail address, other times a social media interaction. Sometimes these things are optional—I can’t outright condemn a company for asking—but there are plenty of “membership” sites whose forms cannot be circumvented: Joss and Main, for instance, or Bespoke Post, the *mints (Shoemint, Homemint, etc.), or Fab in its olden days.

This is becoming an all-too-familiar request. It starts out innocently enough—an e-mail address! It just wants an e-mail address. An e-mail address is easy to give, and newsletters are easy to unsubscribe from. Better use a real one in case you actually like anything on the site.

But a “submit” later, and it turns out it’s not just your e-mail address that the site wants. Really, if you just give your full name and make up a password, the site promises, pinky swear, you’ll be able to get through to the actual material. You hand that over too, only to find yourself in the next few days on a 20-e-mail-a-week roller coaster ride, from which you can only get off if you unsubscribe by logging in using that password you’ve now forgotten. That's too much effort; you commit the e-mails to spam so they can backfill your Web e-mail storage for eternity.

The drop-in e-mail form must be somewhat effective, given that an increasing number of sites are using it. But for every instance that results in a pleasant, productive interaction with a website that it’s a pleasure to see in your inbox, there are 10 more crowding in there whose space and time are not worth the one chair or gadget you wanted to check out once. Hence, this form becomes a dead end—seeing it means saying goodbye to whatever content remains behind it, or else saying goodbye to your ability to innocently browse anonymously. One HackerNews user commented on a post about tabcloseddidntread.com that he keeps a bookmarklet to kill pop-ups such as these.

Perhaps as annoying as the form-request dead end is the mobile-design switchback, when clicking on a link from somewhere takes you anywhere but the intended destination. Another site, Crapshaming, highlights some of these problematic areas: for instance, a page requesting that you download the relevant app instead of using the site. Too often, when we respectfully decline, the browser takes the liberty of sending us to the site’s or service’s homepage rather than to the page we initially requested.

The problem with apps is that, particularly on iOS, they can’t open links from other sources. An app is not the solution to the problem at hand, which is accessing this one particular page on the site. Nor is it the solution to the problem of accessing the site going forward, unless the problem is "I want to use this site exclusively as a source but don't want to bother with a bookmark or typing the first few letters to autocomplete the URL."

Like the newsletter form, the app request is still a little coercive, with that tiny “…or continue to the mobile site” link. But there’s no way to explain to companies that no, we don't want your app. There’s no way to opt out of this notice, no way to ask the site to leave you alone about the app.

The problem is that asking to install an app presumes a relationship. If the site is being accessed via a Google result, there’s no precedent for that request. We’re not friends, site and/or app. We’ve only just met. Maybe we have met before, but for the purposes of evading this encounter, I’ll sure pretend like we didn’t.

Just as spam is effective because the cost of producing it is practically zero and hence any positive effect is a net positive, asking to install an app costs little other than our annoyance. But a relationship built on the backs of people who agree to install an app because they are hoodwinked into thinking it’s the only way—or fill out an e-mail form because they don’t realize they don’t have to—isn’t going to last.

The app request also assumes the mobile app is so much better than the mobile site that it’s worth the cost of navigating away from the general browser to a dedicated location. Given that mobile design is still well in its infancy, that is… unlikely. Trying to shepherd customers into being beta testers for a half-baked app is not the best idea either.

Generally speaking, most people don’t want the app like that. Most people don’t want the newsletter like that. There are newsletters I've signed up for and enjoy, and I didn't get them from an unwelcome form. Each individual action of refusing these things is itself not so bad. But totted up to a few dozen times a day, I’m becoming relieved when a site doesn’t have a newsletter or app to cram in my face. This teaches us to look for the tiny X or the "get me out of here" link with no attention paid to what's front and center, and we bail when it can't be easily found. The Internet has, for the most part, my trust that when I click on something, it will take me where it says it will go (assurances that I won the lottery or that my PayPal account has been limited excepted); it’s sad when otherwise good companies erode it.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

The worst case I've come across was when browsing a forum on my phone and it asked if I wanted to install the app. I clicked to install the app since I plan on visiting the forum enough that the annoying mobile version would drive me crazy only to find out that they want 5$ for the app.

The thing I hate the most about a lot of sites, both mobile and desktop, is that the designers make it so the 'back' button either merely reloads the page or backs up only to the site entry and will go no farther with just a click.

Sure, if I right click I can pick out where I want to go back to, but IMHO the 'back lock in' as I call it, is fucking bullshit of the first order.

While it's annoying on the desktop, I hate it with a purple passion on mobile.

And yeah, if I visited a site regularly (Ars, for example) I'd probably get the app.But for the occasional product view or article? Not hardly.

I get even more frustrated when mandatory email forms decide that the plus symbol is not a valid character in an email address. I don't think they're trying to deny useful tagging features so much as using a crappy regex to "validate" email. Too bad website, now you're getting mailinator instead.

I've had more than one IT-savvy person mutter something unprintable when I pointed out that Facebook tracks their browsing with those Like buttons on sites. How do you think it knows "Be the first of your friends to Like this page"?

I've had more than one IT-savvy person mutter something unprintable when I pointed out that Facebook tracks their browsing with those Like buttons on sites. How do you think it knows "Be the first of your friends to Like this page"?

Huffington Post just changed their TOS. If you wish to post a comment on their site, you must log in using Facebook, displaying your real name. I understand, they have no First Amendment obligation to provide a platform for others to post their opinions. That said, I am using my First Amendment right to avoid their site.

Yes, I have a strong dislike of web sites suggesting I download their app. If I felt a need to access their content through an app, I would have looked for them in the App Store instead.

Similarly, I don't like it when I visit a site and a little popup tells me to, "Click here to add a shortcut to your home screen!" And in order to make that popup disappear I have to click on the tiny X in the corner.

Another annoyance, regarding mobile sites, is when I get to a site from a Google search and it redirects me to their mobile site, but not to the page I wanted to see - instead sending me to their front page. To see the content I wanted, I have to search for a "view desktop version" link then return to the search results and try the link again.

Quora. I've just gone ahead and blackholed quora.com in my DNS so that I don't have to even accidentally see their crap. No, I'm not going to link a facebook or twitter account just to read the site. Not now, not ever.

I get even more frustrated when mandatory email forms decide that the plus symbol is not a valid character in an email address. I don't think they're trying to deny useful tagging features so much as using a crappy regex to "validate" email. Too bad website, now you're getting mailinator instead.

I just had to update my companies software to deal with the new W2 regulations (Part of our product is payroll) and they now include email validation. The W2 regulations include the + as being valid email so any other web site should allow it as well.

Huffington Post just changed their TOS. If you wish to post a comment on their site, you must log in using Facebook, displaying your real name. I understand, they have no First Amendment obligation to provide a platform for others to post their opinions. That said, I am using my First Amendment right to avoid their site.

Quora. I've just gone ahead and blackholed quora.com in my DNS so that I don't have to even accidentally see their crap. No, I'm not going to link a facebook or twitter account just to read the site. Not now, not ever.

Yeah, I've done that with a few sites as well, such as Expert Sexchange. Quora just recently joined the heap of shit I don't need to use.

Hard to argue against the obnoxiousness of nagging people for information or to do something on the web. It's pretty much right up there with restaurant websites that are flash-only. Always a joy to visit when I'm on my phone and I need the address or the phone number in order to go there. Oh well, guess dinner will be at McDonald's instead of Chez Pierre.

It seems like the only marketable data these days is personally identifiable data, which is why they do this. My guess….is that the goldmine that used to be "anonymous data" has failed to yield profitable fruit, so now everyone is assuming that the money is at the personal data level. While I'm sure that data mining on people's habits does let you tweak your strategies quite a bit, I would expect returns to diminish pretty fast: sure, I'm a guy, in Massachusetts…it would be dumb to advertise nail salons in atlanta to me. However, just because you know I like burrito joints around boston doesn't mean I'm going to give a crap about burrito joint ads. It's not like knowing my behavior is going to let them bore a psychological connection straight into my purchasing habits.

So, yeah, knowing my gender, general interests, and location: useful for marketing. Knowing that I tend to purchase coke with pizza on wednesdays…interesting, but not necessarily profitable information.

I've had more than one IT-savvy person mutter something unprintable when I pointed out that Facebook tracks their browsing with those Like buttons on sites. How do you think it knows "Be the first of your friends to Like this page"?

Install Ghostery - then you don't need to worry about being tracked.

I just don't don't use Facebook

Another point in Ars's favor, you can disable the sharing links in your settings if you don't want them. This means you could prevent Facebook et al. from seeing your Ars habits even if you were logged into both sites at the same time.

The app request also assumes the mobile app is so much better than the mobile site that it’s worth the cost of navigating away from the general browser to a dedicated location. Given that mobile design is still well in its infancy, that is… unlikely. Trying to shepherd customers into being beta testers for a half-baked app is not the best idea either.

I'm not sure you can say that. Some sites, like the example you showed of Google+, work much better as an app than a website (in my opinion) and include offline features. Maybe some of the mints are different, as I've never tried any of the other sites you've mentioned. I'm also confused by your statement that mobile design is well in its infancy - if you mean mobile web design I'd agree, but mobile app design seems to be fairly mature on their respective platforms (based on their current platform versions). In any case, this paragraph seems to set an opposing argument rather than supportive.

I've had more than one IT-savvy person mutter something unprintable when I pointed out that Facebook tracks their browsing with those Like buttons on sites. How do you think it knows "Be the first of your friends to Like this page"?

I used to read my local newspaper and click 'No' every visit on their "GET OUR APP" popup. Then they decided to double-popup. The real problem with an app is that there's no Settings -> Safari -> Clear Everything for it.

On my desktop, I bought Disconnect after rumors circulated about Adblock Plus and Ghostery (unsurprisingly) not being concerned about their freeloading users.

Hard to argue against the obnoxiousness of nagging people for information or to do something on the web. It's pretty much right up there with restaurant websites that are flash-only. Always a joy to visit when I'm on my phone and I need the address or the phone number in order to go there. Oh well, guess dinner will be at McDonald's instead of Chez Pierre.

It seems like the only marketable data these days is personally identifiable data, which is why they do this. My guess….is that the goldmine that used to be "anonymous data" has failed to yield profitable fruit, so now everyone is assuming that the money is at the personal data level. While I'm sure that data mining on people's habits does let you tweak your strategies quite a bit, I would expect returns to diminish pretty fast: sure, I'm a guy, in Massachusetts…it would be dumb to advertise nail salons in atlanta to me. However, just because you know I like burrito joints around boston doesn't mean I'm going to give a crap about burrito joint ads. It's not like knowing my behavior is going to let them bore a psychological connection straight into my purchasing habits.

So, yeah, knowing my gender, general interests, and location: useful for marketing. Knowing that I tend to purchase coke with pizza on wednesdays…interesting, but not necessarily profitable information.

edit: nuked a pointless comma

Decisions come in too broad categories, routine and non-routine. Behavioral data can do an excellent job of learning your decisionmaking process in routine cases, but for non-routine the data miners are still largely shooting in the dark. Nudging your Wednesday pizza habit involves moving your routine decision a bit, but not so much that it becomes a non-routine decision and fully engages the higher reasoning centers of the brain (maybe offer a discount on an extra topping, but not try to change up the entire composition of the meal).

I've had more than one IT-savvy person mutter something unprintable when I pointed out that Facebook tracks their browsing with those Like buttons on sites. How do you think it knows "Be the first of your friends to Like this page"?

Install Ghostery - then you don't need to worry about being tracked.

I just don't don't use Facebook

That won't help you. Even if you don't use Facebook, that 'Like' still tracks you, compiles information about you, stores and cross-references that information so that they will have it ready to use if or when you ever do sign up for Facebook. If any of your friends use Facebook, they have probably tagged and named your face in Photos, and that name as well as facial recognition can be automatically correlated to other information about you that's already online.

Thus, even if you never use Facebook, it's easy for them to compile an automatic database of information about you that they can in turn sell to other advertisers to provide targeted ads to you on other sites - such as, for example, ArsTechnica.com

Not true for me. I hate it when I have to make an account to buy something at an eCommerce site. Why can't I just pay for the thing and have them send it to me without having to go through all that hassle?

I have one email address that is only for signing up for things. If I like the site, then I go ahead and use my regular email addy. If I don't like the site, well, I never see anything until I login to my decoy email address the next time I sign up for something